Unofficial news and tips about Google

June 24, 2011

YouTube Tests a Black Player

A few readers spotted a new YouTube player with a redesigned control bar that uses a black background. The current control bar doesn't stand out so that you can focus on the video you are watching.

A YouTube user says that he "would really appreciate a way to go back to the normal player, with its more obvious progress bar and less ugly/hyperactive popup controls". I really like the bigger pause button, but YouTube should also change the action buttons below the player to better integrate in the new design.

I had it for week after i changed my youtubes language to english, but then it disappeared and im now back to that gray/white player- the black one was awesome, its design was more "cool" looking.

I like it so much more than the old one, because its fully planted inside the video and it fades, althought id hope the fading would and "inside video implanting" would have on/off settings. and the colour of player could be customizeble for youtube users.

The buffering had been too fixed, it doesnt "fake" buffer anymore. I hope they wont decline this update i like it A LOT!

Don't like it, and what I really don't like is that google again does stuff without giving users the CHOICE ... I have no problem with letting people have a new color or redesign, re-envision etc.. but after I've looked at it ... and decide that *I* don't like it .. please give me the choice to change it to what I *do* like ... don't disrespect my dislike of the change ... respect it, and respect users rights to a choice. Please google.. stop doing harm to all.

I really like the look of it, but the one problem I have (which I also had with the last version) is that it can be very difficult to pause to read any subtitles or annotations. And as for annotations that link to anything, if they're at the bottom of the video, you CAN'T click on them—for example, if you have the new player, try clicking the annotation at the bottom of this video:

The second guy above me..not everyone's problem is just them bitching about change. Some people have legitimate problems asshole. I personally like the new player, it's one of the few youtube changes I agree with. Yet, I am not gonna tell everyone who has a real issue with it to deal with it because I like it.

and i came here to say how i dislike this new black player. why do you force us to use this §$%§$& player. i wish there were more settings like always show full player and not autohiding of time and volume etc.

i realy realy hate the new version and i am realy realy angry about that! thank you for this step backward and for making our y-t experience still worse.

i guess you have nothing better to do. i miss the old classic player. everything visible. no autohiding of anything. full volume bar.

why do not you allow us to choose which player we want to use? you have tons of settings in gmail and the callander and here nothing.

oh man i can't stand this black $%$/&. the progressbar is still smaller then the last time and the video time is not visible at all. PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES undo the change or LET US CHOOSE the player in the settings!!!

everything from google is cool but youtube. the black player is the worst player in the world and there are not options at all. fine, you are experimenting but why to force everyone to use this new sh!t?

Drives me crazy. As you skip through the video it hops up and down 100 times instead of staying put. And it's annoying how it obscures part of the video, any links put at the bottom of the vid are impossible to click on. And lastly I'd like to see the time while watching, to know how long is left and to watch out for any interesting timestamps ppl mentioned in comments.

Most annoying of all is I seem to be the only person I know that has this new player, and I can't get the old one back.

I don't like that the control bar goes down so slowly. It makes videos where I'm reliant on subtitles difficult to watch because I miss some of the subs when I put my mouse over the vid to change settings. Other than that, I don't care. Though the youtube grey-and-white is what sets youtube players apart. Product differentiation.

While the new player is prettier, the pop-up controls are AWFUL. It makes the player harder to use and obscures some of the video. Keep the black, fine, but stop the pop-up fluff please!On balance the old one is much better.

um did the geniuses at youtube forget that people embed videos on their blogs? They gray was a neutral that worked well on light and dark blogs.. this one sticks out like a sore thumb, now, on my mostly white & pastel toned blog. ergh! How hard is it to add an option to let people choose what color they want??

If you want to have the player on a sidebar as some sort of thumbnail thing of 220px or so, they screwed it, cause the logo gets jammed on top of the duration info. Besides that, red is far from being a neutral color.

The dark player is really nice, because when you're watching a dark video in fullscreen you certainly don't want a BRIGHT WHITE BAR to pop-up right in your retinas... :) But an option would be cool - a black/white player (for the extremist angry talibans out there) and a DARK or GREY THEME! Pretty pleaaase youtube? ^___^